


Dementia

by DeLec



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dementia, Depression, Euthanasia - Ninja Style, Gen, POV Multiple, Reincarnation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeLec/pseuds/DeLec
Summary: Reincarnation transfers a soul to a new body. However, the body also affects the mind.A view on how a diseased body can affect a reincarnation.
Kudos: 3





	1. The slow as usual day of a middle-aged man

Takahashi Reo wakes up slowly, still tired because of the late night commotion and alarm. He rises from bed and slowly moves to the bathroom to shower. He dresses up, the underwear first, then the kimono whose cotton itched against his skin. He takes his purse and hobbles out of his flat. The middle-aged man descends the stairs, a step at a time. He walks slowly out of the village-owned apartment complex and goes down the street, toward the market. Reo salutes his neighbour, a quite amiable lady who is pacing in the direction of the Academy. He thinks he remembers her talking about getting students in three days. Maybe the building will become livelier. Reo tries to remember her name but is distracted by the noises of the market. He goes straight for the fish stall, trying to avoid people walking animatedly all around him. The seller hails him:

“Hello mister Takahashi, what can I get you today, the usual?”

“Please, and add some tuna pieces too.” Reo grumble back.

“Of course!” and the vendor goes cutting salmon and tuna pieces.

He then hands them to Reo:

“Two hundred and ten ryos please.”

Reo fumbles his purse open and counts the notes. He then hands them to the fish vendor.

“Here.”

“Thank you! Have a nice day mister Takahashi!”

The dement man then goes to the rice vendor stall, saying hello to a little girl sitting on a stall, hair braided with a large smile on her face. A woman stops and stares at him, but then shakes her head and goes on her business. There is a long queue at the stall. After a while, it’s Reo’s turn and he simply asks twice the usual amount of rice. The vendor is quite cheerful but works quickly, as the queue behind Reo is quite long, with some ninjas in the mix it seems.

The middle-aged man slowly limps his way back home while thinking about his families. Both would be horrified in different ways to see what he’s become, a useless member of the society. He shakes his head as he climbs up the stairs. No point on rehashing the pasts. Reo opens his door. No point of locking it when more than half of the village can bypass any common lock. He goes in his kitchen, opens a cupboard, takes out a saucepan a begins to boil water for his rice. While the rice is cooking, he washes his fish rubs it fish with marjoram, thyme and laurel. He then drains his rice and set it to cool. When the rice is cooled enough to manipulate it, Alexander makes sushis, reminiscent of the time passed learning how to cook them with his son, and puts them in his fridge.

Before lunch, Alexander lists ideas of what to draw in the afternoon. As only pin tumbler and level tumbler locks are used in the village, he has already drawn the Chubb detector lock and disk tumbler lock, and wants to introduce the magnetic coded lock. However, his memories are hazy and this lock was usually manufactured in special factories with unique tools, therefore he didn’t see a lot of those during his locksmith career.

Reo eats a portion of the sushis and drinks a glass of water for his meal. He then washes his plate and chopsticks and puts them in the drier. The former locksmith then sits himself at his drawing table and begins to sketch what he remembers of the tools used to make magnetic coded locks while ignoring the angel statue that appeared this morning on the yard under his window.

When the sunlight is too dim for him to continue drawing, Reo rises from his stool and exit his home. After once more descending the stairs, he travels to the base of the village’s administration tower to a small ramen stand to eat a small bowl. The food is quite cheap and easily digestible, the owner is respectable, and the place is scarcely overcrowded despite being sometime noisy.

“Good evening mister Takahashi.”

“Evening.”

“What do you want today?”

“Miso ramen without toping please.”

“Alright.”

While Reo sits down, ninjas working in the administration tower tickle in. They are confabulating in low voices and barely acknowledge him except for a short nod that he returns. The cook serves his ramen. Reo eats slowly, carefully and thoroughly chewing the noodles. The conversation near him sounds like it is slowly dying as the orders are served. As he finishes his noodles, a new group enters. The middle-aged man quickly pays and exits the stand. As he approaches the building he lives in, Alexander reminisces the past. The dement man is distracted by an elderly gentleman that looks like he is trying to sell cheese. Reo ignores him but his train of thought is broken. At home, Reo undresses and slumps on his bed with a sigh. Takahashi Reo, the dement middle-aged man, fall asleep immediately. Alexander Olofsson, the former locksmith, dream of a life he barely remembers and cries in his sleep.


	2. The busy day of an old leader

Sarutobi Hiruzen sighed and stretched his back. Every day he was spending sitting behind his desk was one more day when he could feel his age. He was still training regularly with his son but he was not the ninja he once had been.

The Third Hokage’s attention went back to the report he was reading. Takahashi Reo, a common name for someone with a common face, brown hairs and brown eyes that tiredly stared at the objective. One of the many citizens of Konohagakure no Sato that he swore to protect, first as a shinobi, then as the third Hokage. Would it be not for the second page of this report, a page unique to the Hokage version of the man’s file, he would have been one more unremarkable citizen, useful for the good operation of the Village but not essential.

The second page however… the second page that the Hokage is reading contains informations that would seem unbelievable had he not personally seen proofs of it. Takahashi Reo claims to remember a past life. A life where he was Alexander Olofsson, a locksmith for a company whose name is nearly unpronounceable. The proofs are the translation of some of their books in unrecognisable characters that the cryptology team managed to decipher and confirm that it was a whole new language, and various drawings of locks with more advanced mechanisms than any locksmiths summoned could create but clearly not designed to be shinobi-proof. 

On the verso of the page, a complete medical report on the dementia that the reincarnated man (What else could it be? Even the most powerful genjutsu didn’t allow to implant a life worth of memory in someone’s mind.) succumbed to following an approved and voluntary mind-read. A nearly useless mind-read as Inoichi was not able to understand the memories of this past life, in a language he was not fluent in, but he managed to see enough to confirm that it spanned an entire life.

Hiruzen sighed again. He would have preferred to not order the mind read and don’t force Takahashi Reo in a state where he could not eat anything difficult to digest, was losing his memories and was seeing illusions, had the Hokage known beforehand what would happen, but it was to late now.

His attention going back to the report, the Hokage read the evaluation of the psychologist following Takahashi Reo progress. The mental health professional stated that his patient’s mental state was getting worse and that he could do nothing about it. The hospital had done a similar appraisal of the situation. Now, he was left with a choice to make. The man was conscious that he was succumbing to dementia and did not want to finish his life in madness. He made last week a single request, the first since he went to the Hokage Tower to tell him about his memories. After he finished drawing the locks he remembered and writing how they were created, he wanted to die a clean death, without sleeping year after year into madness.

Hiruzen hated to send a shinobi to his death, and the suicide of Hatake Sakumo had shaken him more than he cared to admit. He buried friends, his wife, his son and his pupil, and their death haunted him by the void he felt constantly where once there was an ardent flame. That a civilian was asking a merciful death, someone he was tasked to protect, only made it worse. He still had a month to make his decision, as the former locksmith hadn’t finished to write down what he remembered, but he knew that he needed to make a decision now, as the Academy exams and the following Jounin team formation would take all of his time, attention and energy.

The Third Hokage took his brush and sighed a third time, but this sigh was one of pure tiredness and sadness. He wrote a quick line and passed it to his secretary, who nodded in return. There was no coming back on his decision now.

The Third Hokage was an old leader, and an older God of Shinobi. But Sarutobi Hiruzen was an older shinobi and an even older man. It was in times like that, alone in his office that he really felt the weight of all the years on his shoulders. He sometimes wished that he could ask with a clear conscience that someone ordered what he just ordered, and go to sleep one last time knowing that his Village, Konohagakure was in good hand. 

Hiruzen then heard a commotion and a familiar voice. He pulled himself together and put a warm smile to his face and he became Gramps once again, ready to welcome in his office his favourite troublemaker.


	3. The standard night of an experienced shinobi

The leader of Root, Shimura Danzou listened to the report his agent gave him, then dismissed it. He frowned. That man, Takahashi Reo, would soon turn to be useless to the village. It was a good thing that Hiruzen decided to kill him, it would prevent the method to counter the new locks designed from leaking. In fact, he had plans to do it himself regardless but now they needed to be altered.

Danzou sent an agent to fetch him Orochimaru’s pawn. When Kabuto arrived, he hid his disapproval. It was clear to him that Kabuto worked as much for himself as he did for Orochimaru. The snake shinobi should have tamed him better, but it didn’t matter to Danzou. For now, the fake genin was a useful tool of communication.

“Do you need advanced unique locks that no one else know the design of?”

“I can assure you my master is perfectly capable of designing new seals to protect what’s his, why do you ask such an obvious question?”

“I am talking of physical locks, not sealing.” said Root’s head, hiding the mounting irritation he was feeling because of the bespectacled pawn.

Kabuto frowned, thinking. “I don’t see what we could use them for, bur I can insure that master Orochimaru will be interested in them at the very least.”

“Then I ask that when he comes to Konoha, we trade the designs for security seals.”

“I will relay that to him. Have a good day Advisor Danzou.”

On these words, Kabuto left the room. Danzou mentally sneered. If the pawn thought these words would anger him, then he was wrong. They only served as a reminder of his goals and ensured he did not act out of place and character. He endured his position all his life, always in the shadow of Hiruzen, and it was only the growing incompetence and senility that the Third Hokage was showing that pushed him to act.

In a way, Shimura Danzou mourned the death of the God of Shinobi, the ruthless combatant that scared his enemies by countering their moves because of his extensive knowledge and mastery of jutsus. But this exceptional shinobi was soon replaced by an affable bureaucrat always smiling, reticent to make sacrifices for the good of Konoha and who did not want to use weapon at his disposition, such as the jinchuriki. This was what Danzou tried to purge Konoha from.

Danzou inspired slowly, and rose from his seat. The head of Root left his office and went to the antechamber where two members of his organisation waited.

“Shadow this man everyday.” he ordered, giving one of them the file “and once he finished drawing the lock he is designing, terminate him and take the plans here. Make his death looking like a standard burglary that went wrong. Do it when his neighbours are absent. Whatever happen, do not let the plans fall in any other hands.”

The agents nodded and left.

The leader of Root went back to his office and pushed the locksmith in the back of his mind. He had a failed invasion to plan for, and he received a mention of promising orphans from the caretaker. He would have to induce them soon, Root lacked spies in the common shinobi track and it was a weakness in his network that he did not want to overlook.

After a few hours of work, he withdrew in his house in the center of Konoha. He had to be rested for the morning council, and Advisor Danzou was needed for it as much as Root’s leader Danzou needed to be here, and Danzou was too much an experienced shinobi to not see the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to criticize and comment on any grammar mistake you see.


End file.
